


Wiederkehr

by crucialandinert



Category: Silicon Valley (TV)
Genre: Angst, Dissociation, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Nietzsche, Past Abuse, Past Child Abuse, Past Sexual Abuse, Physical Abuse, Vastly Inferior to My Hungry Fatigue, art therapy, just an average day for donald dunn, lil bit, not graphic but there is a bj and ahem
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-22
Updated: 2017-11-22
Packaged: 2019-02-05 12:59:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12795087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crucialandinert/pseuds/crucialandinert
Summary: Jared could barely bring himself to believe it had happened. Only the stinging of his cheek informed him he hadn't dreamt it.





	Wiederkehr

**Author's Note:**

> Maybe I'll be done giving Donald my emotional (and very metaphorical) autobiography.  
> ETA: Now recorded as a podfic: https://soundcloud.com/user-58580412-511266427/wiederkehr

_What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: "This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence.... The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!"_

_Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus?_

* * *

Jared could barely bring himself to believe it had happened. As he sat on his cot, in the dark, just faintly touched by the dim tail-ends of light fanning out through the crack under the garage door—only the stinging of his cheek, probed by wondering fingers, informed him he hadn't dreamt it. 

Dinesh—had struck him. Dinesh... had assaulted him, really; become an assailant, became the latest in a long line of assailants. Of course, it hadn't been his fault, Gilfoyle had laid hands on Dinesh first, and Dinesh merely passed it along down the ageless chain of scapegoating, a perfectly normal psychological defense. Jared had no doubt that this particular chain began somewhere in Gilfoyle's childhood, he'd picked up on that at once; no matter how divergently they'd responded as adults -- like knows like, on the inside. In fact, Jared's heart hurt for Gilf, who wore his darkness on his sleeve, and for Dinesh too, whose soul's compass, lacking true north, was condemned to spin wildly. He was sure they were not proud right now, sure that they were suffering torments; had Jared been translating Gilfoyle's parting "Shut up" for the subtext U.N., he would have rendered it as: "I am terribly ashamed." 

But, as well as he understood and forgave what had happened, Jared found his body beginning to fold in on itself as he drew his distant knees to his chest. It was just -- he hadn't  _wanted_ it to be this way, not this time. He'd really, truly thought that it wasn't going to be. Once out of the clutches of rapacious Gavin, following bright Richard to freedom, becoming one of the band of brothers, awash in the delight of their gentle ribbing and camaraderie, amid the warmest sense of family he'd known... he'd thought he was safe. Oh, the tune those words always took in his head. A song gone wrong, a declining minor third. A mocking taunt. 

Embarrassingly, because he'd tried so hard, because he'd thought this time he had it right, it did come as a shock, despite the truths he understood so well about human nature. Namely: people are people; cruelty and exploitation lie dormant somewhere inside every son of Adam, every daughter of Eve, waiting for the right conditions in order to emerge. Jared, apparently, was one such condition, his particular configuration of weakness and naivete able to tempt forth maltreatment from even one so amiable as Dinesh. It was Jared who caused it every time; he was the constant: the element that decays every situation, no matter how promising, to the same dark matter. 

Yes, he always caused it. Gavin, monumental Gavin—Gavin of giant stature, who held the key and had the power to reach inside him and pull out every last handful of shame that rooted there, to rub his face in it—Gavin had taught him that. Gavin had made him tiny, to the point of nonexistence; "Donald” blinked into nothingness at his whim, and Gavin put in his place exactly the vessel he desired. He had done it with such perfect clarity, that Jared had been forced to face that every escape he’d thought he’d made so far had been a false one; everywhere he'd run had returned him to the labyrinth's heart. And he’d thought being brought to this realization for the first time was a good thing, a healing thing; a sign that he was ready to change, to leave it behind, abjure it, move forward in straight lines and ascending topography; at last arise to plains of joy. 

But, it seemed, Jared had been wrong. Nothing had changed at all.

* * *

He is in the void. Blackness surrounds him. All he can feel: the sting of the carpet, on his knees, on his shins; the discomfort in his arms, wrenched behind his back; the curve of his spine, as his head is yanked roughly to expose the fragile throat; the hotness of the flush on his cheeks; the clammy, pricking sweat of fear. There's a voice in his ears, that comes with heavy breath; a hand in his hair, sometimes caressing, sometimes clawing; and the voice is saying:

 _Do you want to be a good boy for me?_  
  
_Jared?_  
  
_I won't hurt you._  
  
_Because I don't have to hurt you._  
  
_Because you aren’t anything._  
  
_And you need me._  
  
_To give you shape._

Jared almost can't distinguish if it's Gavin's voice or just the background noise in his head; if it's the former, there's a certain peace in hearing it aloud, returning to him from outside, in resolution clearer, condensed from the cloud of static that never leaves his brain. Another peace is found in the sequence of relinquishing his body; submission, going limp, an ancient analgesic in which his frame is well-practiced; this is for Jared an area of confidence, a source of security, a firm foundation. 

 He will not open his eyes. 

Once the more existential humiliation is complete to Gavin's satisfaction, Jared, still on his knees, turns his face toward his second task of the evening. He pauses for a moment, head bowed; barely traces his lips softly upon the most sensitive part of the proffered tumescence; his hands gently slide up the disdainful, domineering legs to hold the other man close. With the wind of a last inhale sweeping through him, he goes down on Gavin; goes down, into a further, warmer dark, made liquid; waves of infantile pleasure swelling through the part of his soul which is called his body. Time is lost, he is lost, dissipated into dream; annihilated; safe. He never wants it to end. 

It does, of course. Brusquely, the hand in his hair breaks the connection, makes him aware that this particular service is no longer required; and the voice in his ear informs him what is. Gavin pushes Jared forward onto the floor, his cheek ground into that stinging carpet, as the older man makes ready to enter him. All of Jared tightens slightly, involuntarily tries to knit itself against the burning that’s about to come; the doctor has told him many, many times that he can't keep laying damage over damage like this, and Jared thinks: Gavin is the only one who truly understands how much it doesn't matter. 

Now, the voice is in his ear again as Gavin bends over his back; it's cliche really, predator and prey, but Jared still shrinks from the places where Gavin's skin touches him.

 _If it wasn't me, it would be someone else, you know that._  
  
_You could never survive by yourself._

The words are more painful than the physical sensations, from which, along with any pleasure, he is removed; reduced to a muffled, rocking, rhythm, the feeling's not much more than a sickening pressure in his belly, that threatens to push his guts out. But perhaps it's the repeated, swallowed pain that sharpens him to perceive it in that moment: Gavin is absolutely right. This is what is true, and Gavin can see it, knows it, knew it the moment hapless lame-duck Donald first set foot through his office door. There has always been someone else, someone stronger, bolder, armed with a kind of aggression Jared does not have, someone whose skill is not submission; solid where he is hazy, loud where he has been silenced; real, alive, where he is merely an apparition. Jared does need that kind of person to survive; in those brief periods of his life when he has been devoid of such a one, when he lacks this orientating force within a bond that cannot break, when he is not coveted, guarded jealously, when his freedom is so valueless that no-one wants to take it away -- at best, he begins to find he cannot eat, and at worst ends up bloodied, or in the hospital.

_You'll never escape._

A lump trickles down from his chest and into his throat. Until Gavin -- he thinks it was Gavin -- said it, he hadn't remembered it was there; the germ of hope, for escape, with which he always begins, the energetic, unfailingly positive person who lives in his head and believes that this time it will be different. The past, learned from, will be left in the past; he'll be careful, he's chosen well; who could possibly make that mistake again. He's an adult now, he's reached the fate of liberation he always knew would come; no matter where he was he always knew it, and therefore survived: in attics, in closets, in his room with Uncle Jerry at night; in spare and sterile dormitories with other boys from whom there wasn't an escape; in courtrooms, social workers' offices, in the kennel with the dogs. And now, always, always trying again, the same sureness clutched in his head that this would be the last time, the resolution awaited with geological endurance finally arrived; a sureness demolished, then renewed, and wholeheartedly reenacted with every expectation of the sun; and yet, here, exactly here, is where he always finds himself in the end. In German, he hears himself thinking, there's a word for it: _Wiederkehr_ , the eternal return.

  
_Jared._  
  
_You'll never escape who you are._

***

Afterwards, he showers, and knows that following a dreamless sleep he'll wake up strangely refreshed. Somehow, a certain amount of pain or injury has the effect of holding him together, mind washed clean and unturbulent, for at least a couple of days. All anyone will see is a brisk young man in a high-powered job he inhabits effortlessly, and Jared will be able to forget ever having been anything else; until the next time. Time? In fact, would you look at the time, he'd better get to bed chop-chop; he has to be fresh for the morning; they have that developer from the QA department, the "Pied Piper" fellow, coming in with his algorithm for Gavin to acquire.

* * *

Jared found himself standing before the mirror, cool palm barely grazing battered cheek. There was nothing there he recognized; he knew the face was his but it just didn't look familiar. He had to mentally manipulate planes of flesh and buried bone structures to get it to hang together as a face at all; and the eyes. So wide, and oddly-shaped, and staring, they looked to him like the eyes of an alien; without understanding, devoid of content, history-less, empty of memory.

**Author's Note:**

> ...in which i just realized that duh the repetition comes from the dissociative splitting away of the memories, so when you're first getting yourself into the re-enactments of situations, you can't possibly notice the similarities, you buried the basis for comparison. sorry for inflicting my art therapy on everyone. i wonder if anyone else can get that out of this text than myself.
> 
> From Wikipedia: "Repetition compulsion is a psychological phenomenon in which a person repeats a traumatic event or its circumstances over and over again. This includes reenacting the event or putting oneself in situations where the event is likely to happen again."


End file.
